How can an alarm system help protect my home and property?
Firstly an alarm system achieves visual deterrent. If a would be intruder sees the alarm bell box on the outside of your property (especially one with an alarm company logo on it) they will in most cases move on to an easier target.
After deterrent the physical security of your home becomes important. Are all windows/doors closed and secure? Are all valuables hidden from sight where possible? Have you good quality branded locks on your doors that cannot be picked/drilled/broken easily? Do you close all your blinds/curtains at night? Intruders do not like what they cannot see.
The second thing an alarm system achieves is that if an intruder is successful in entering your home it should limit the time they spend there. Once the alarm sounds the intruder will more than likely leave straight away, if not they should not spend much time in your property.
Lately we have had reports of alarm companies claiming they are Police Approved and/or they install Police Approved alarms.
This can be very misleading to anyone choosing an alarm company or alarm system.
We issued a freedom of information request to the PSNI asking the following simple questions.
Is there such a thing as a Police Approved alarm company ?
Is there such a thing as a Police Approved alarm system ?
We received the following written confirmation back from the PSNI (Reference Number F-2011-03198)
Community Safety Branch has confirmed that there are NO Police approved alarm companies
or Police approved alarm systems.
We hope this clears this matter up. If any alarm company states that they are Police Approved or that they install Police Approved alarm systems they are not telling the truth !
No alarm system, no matter how sophisticated or expensive can guarantee that a burglary or attempted burglary will not occur, but it has been proven that a professionally fitted burglar alarm system greatly reduces the chance of being burgled.
Will I get Home Contents Insurance Discount ?
You may be told that you will be eligible for a discount on your home contents insurance if you have an alarm fitted.
Extract from The Guardian Newspaper: Most insurance companies offer a discount of between 2% and 15% on the cost of home contents insurance if you have a burglar alarm, according to this month’s Which? magazine.
But research from comparison website Tescocompare.com has produced a very different picture, concluding that installing an alarm “does not seem to translate into lower insurance premiums”.
Tescocompare found that the average saving on your annual home insurance premium from adding an alarm to your property is only £5 – not much compared to the cost of installing and maintaining a security system. “If you are planning on adding extra security like this, solely because you want to lower your premium, you may find it does very little to bring down costs,” says a spokesman.
If you do have your alarm registered with your insurance company do not forget to set it before you leave your property. If your home gets burgled and you have not set the system, your insurance company can refuse to pay out on any claim as you did not take reasonable care to protect your property. You may ask how would they know if it the alarm was not set at the time ? Alarm panels have an event log which can easily be accessed to see if the alarm was set or not.
Are Police response alarms worth paying for ?
Extract from Which? Magazine: For a higher fee, you can have your alarm linked to the police. Paying more won’t guarantee they come out. DCI Taylor said that whether police go to your home and how quickly depends on what other incidents are happening and what other resources are available.
We decided to investigate further.
Extract from Quotelinedirect: Average burglary time in UK is between 5 and 6 minutes.
Following a freedom of information request to the PSNI asking what the average times (by area) to Emergency Response and Priority Response calls from the 1st April to 30th September 2009 we have a table of areas with the average response times listed. We calculated average response times from the table to be the following:
Average emergency response time in NI =13 minutes
Average priority response time in NI = 46 minutes
So what category does a call from a monitored alarm system fall under, emergency or priority ?
We issued a freedom of information request to the PSNI asking that in the case of a normal monitored domestic home alarm system. If a confirmed intruder was reported by the alarm receiving centre would it fall under the emergency or priority category for PSNI response?
Our request for information was refused on the following grounds- “Disclosing specific details of alarm procedures could assist criminal elements and increase the risk to property owners. It would not be in the public interest to release information that may be of assistance to anyone involved in criminal activity. The release of information under Freedom of Information is a release into the public domain and not just to the individual requester.”
We also asked for the numbers of arrests as a direct result of police being called out to any activation of a monitored alarm system (intruder caught in the act).
They could not supply us with this information as they do not record it ! Why not ? Would it not be in the public interest to know if the millions of pounds spent on domestic alarm monitoring was value for money ?
Extract From Which? magazine: We found no hard evidence to justify the expense of a monitoring contract
Approved Alarm Companies: NSI or SSAIB
Some companies may attempt to make you believe that an alarm installation other than that of an NSI or SSAIB approved company will be nothing but trouble, this is of course totally untrue. There are countless alarm companies and electrical contractors in the UK and Ireland that have installed faultless alarm systems which have operated without issue for years. Word of mouth is the most important sales tool for any company and if they do a poor job the bad word soon gets out. Alarm companies need to install a lot of systems to survive and if the alarm systems they install are unreliable the company will not continue trading for long.
Recently a burglar alarm company who were both NSI and SSAIB approved featured on the BBC Watchdog programme due to bad practices. Their director was branded a rogue trader by the programme!!
Amazingly this company is still trading with both NSI and SSAIB approval !!
